NATIONAL DEFENSE: Carrots & Fire Tongs

"Now the cleverest thing I ever
did," said the White Knight, "was inventing a new pudding during the
meat course . . . [But] I don't believe that pudding ever will be
cooked. And yet it was a very clever pudding to invent."

Through the Looking-Glass.

Everyone hoped that one of the principal results of the armed services
merger would be a neat, well-rounded military program. Congress
intended it to be that way; when it wrote the merger act, it
specifically directed the new Military Establishment to produce such a
program. Congress, so most people thought, would merely take the
program...